save the date

yes my wedding is just 3 months away. and yes i just put my save the dates in the mail today. what can i say, creating design for yourself is tough business. i am glad i waited, because i am happy with how the save the dates turned out. it was important to me to get the hotel information to our out of town guests, bridal party and family members before the invitations went out. so it wasn't a huge endeavor since we only had to send about 45 of them out.

since our reception is in an old mansion in historic allentown i wanted something vintage buffalo. for inspiration i used vintage buffalo post cards that i have been collecting and a book called "Postcard Views - A Walk Down Main Street Buffalo, New York, circa 1910." now i can't wait to do the invites! while they won't necessarily be postcard themed, they will incorporate a historic buffalo theme!


i know. i have been mia the past week. it has pretty much been a whirlwind, and this weekend will be too. updates on all that soon!

the bachelorette bouquet

my friends call me craftastic. i think it's fun word. and i try to act on it as often as possible. i have 2 bachelorette parties to go to this weekend and i have been working on perfecting "the bachelorette bouquet." this is bouquet number 4 & 5 and i am really pleased with how they turned out. the center is 5 or 6 pairs of underwear made to look like flowers. i especially like this gift for a few of reasons:

1. it's not raunchy...
   
2. you can tailor the underwear to suit the person you are giving it to, a really conservative person can get really conservative under garments and you won't embarrass them
3. it plays along with the wedding theme! bachelorettes often have veils when they go out - so why not a bouquet too?
   
   
   
   i am thinking about marketing and selling these soon. what do you think? i am trying to come up with a price. any ideas? i would certainly need some better photos...
   

weekend in review

• yes it's wednesday, and weekend in review blogs should probably be on monday. but oh well.

• friday: happy hour and dinner out for my friend liz (liz is on the right in the photo below) who is moving to chicago this weekend. she got an awesome job working for kerri foods, so we are proud of her! but we are still sad she is leaving. i am working on convincing her to start a blog.... while we were there we ate some delicious nachos (below), and had a lot of good laughs, note below: chris stole some steak from lauren's salad and then dropped it in his beer...
• saturday: worked in the morning, a little design then some real estate. then sean and i cleaned our house like crazy in preparation for our little party. lauren graduated from law school on saturday! and we had a small gathering at our house, liz (resident pastry chef) made creme brulee and we played beer pong on our front lawn...classy. we had other tasty foods including some hummus, brownies, veggies and dip and some home made salsa that i made.
• sunday: i held an open house, it was so dreary and only 5 groups came, good thing i brought my book because they all showed up in the last half hour.
  

• i just finshed book #3 in the janet evanovich, stephanie plum series - such chick lit. i love it!
• sunday afternoon we painted the walls in our hall, we still have to do the trim and hang the light so photos then!

• homemade salsa recipe:
• 3 large tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/3rd of a medium size red onion
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice
• half of a medium sized hot pepper (your choice depending on how much heat you like, mine was pretty mild)
• chop everything and mix together, make sure to take the seeds out of the pepper first unless you want a ton of kick, i didn't have my food processor so mine was more of a chopped salsa, but you can zap it in the food processor a couple of seconds!
  

whew - we had a busy weekend. this upcoming weekend should be even more insane...

random bits

• the power went out here 3 times today, twice while i was on a conference call, my cell service was knocked out twice. the third time power was out for almost 2 hours. why you ask? i have no idea since it is 60 and sunny here today.
• i used the time the power was out to organize some paperwork/receipts, pack some things to move over to mine and seans and go for a run/walk.
• my shins are doing fairly well! yay! i was out for about 30 mins, and according to mapmyrun i did about 2.5 miles.
• sean and are painting the ceiling in our back hall tonight, little by little the back hall and kitchen will be complete...then its on to the bedroom upstairs which is pretty much a blank slate, but i really want to have it done so we can move in there together when we get married
  
• i am so excited for american idol next week, i like the davids a lot, it should be fun, though i don't think the producers should be allowed to pick songs anymore
• this week i got my first official listing (i've sold houses, but I haven't been on the listing side before), cute little 50s cape - open house this sunday!

thirft store tuesdays

yes. i am know it is not tuesday. though, for the first half of the day i thought it was tuesday as i planned this post in my head. so, oh well, its thrift store tuesday on wednesday.

i haven't been thrift storing in a realllllly long time. so this post is going to be about all my existing thrift store finds in my family room. please excuse the sucky pictures, they were taken a while ago when i was playing with settings on my camera.

1. This was the inspiration for this whole room. Leather chair, found at my church's flea fling, $10.
2. Leather foot stool, at the perfect height, found at City Mission thrift store, $10.
3. Funny little table, I refinished the top by stripping off the existing polyurethane and stain, I restained it, painted the edge and coated it with poly, found at the Amvets on Hertel, $12.
4. Two light fixture, a thrift store find from my mom so I don't know the details. Hard to see in this picture really... but the paper shades are perfectly in tact which is hard to find.
5. Two tier TV stand, free from a friend
6. This is actually a desk, the very skinny strip above the 3 drawers is a pull out writing surface, and the space above with the verticle slats opens up for more store, I painted the shelves (they had red ink stains on them), added a fresh coat of stain to the whole things, new hardware on the drawers ($1.50 each), and my dad reglued the bottom leg on. St Vincent de Paul Thrift store, $20.
7. Hard to see on here, but there are 4 vintage cameras (now 5) on these shelves, my mom found these as well, a few bucks each.
8. Solid wood coffee table, a couple of scratches on top covered with matching stain, The Stock Exchange on Hertel, combined purchase with #12, $175 for the two(minus $100 gift card!).
9. Light teal lamp, hard to see in this photo again, another one of my mom's finds, not sure on info, it think $2.
10. Lamp shade, City Mission Thrift Store, $7.
11. End table, solid wood, with brass wrapped on legs, A+ Thrift store, $30 (my mom and I trying to get this in my Jetta - priceless. Sean had to come get us with his parent's van)
12. Leather chair, just cleaned up with some lemon juice and cream of tartar, also from The Stock Exchange on Hertel, combined purchase with #8, $175 for the two (-$100 gift card)
    

so that's everything so far. my mom joked I will get all the furniture in my house for under $1000. now I am not sure she is too far off....

ps: what does everyone think about the glass block wall? i have a love hate relationship with it and have a different plan for it everyday.

missing michelle

in honor of michelle taking a hiatus from the blogging world i have decided i must blog and maybe keep blogging. well at least until she comes back to join us in the blogosphere. since i was not prepared for a topic today, i think some bright sun shinny photos (all taken this spring) are in order.